Attitude Functions Applied to Advertisements (2500 words)

For this Assignment, select a print, television, or Internet-based advertisement; then, analyze it from the perspective of the functional approach to attitudes.

Advertisement selected: SKII Marriage Market Takeover

https://www.forbes.com/sites/mariannacerini/2016/0…

In the essay, please follow the structure as below:

1. Explain the function to which the advertisement appeals. (700 words)
Value-Expressive Function of Attitudes

2. Justify your position on whether or not the advertisement effectively appeals to the function. (700 words)
Yes it did, we can justify this from the Campaign’s Performance.

3. Explain how you might change the advertisement to more effectively meet the function you identified. (500 words)
SKII can invite more women from different background to participate in the film.

4. Explain how you might change the advertisement to appeal to a different function than the one you identified. (600 words)
‘Knowledge Function of Attitudes’ by emphasising the SKII product.

• Please support your responses using the Resources and the current literature.
• Please use plagiarism check.

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Detail Resources, materials and instructions for each paragraph:
1. Explain the function to which the advertisement appeals. (700 words)

SKII advertisement appeals to Value-Expressive Function of Attitudes

Value-expressive function of attitudes:

Value-Expressive Function of Attitudes allow consumers to express their core values, self-concept, and beliefs to others. in other words, the positive expression and type of individual a consumer perceives themselves to be and the value that they hold.

Advertising campaigns that appeal to consumer behaviors based on the value-expressive or utilitarian functions are the most common (Sirgy, 1991). Advertising targeted to consumers with value-expressive attitudes will typically include product symbolism and an image strategy. In either case, it is important to understand why a consumer holds a particular attitude toward the product or service.

Why? The advertisement represents the highly educated urban women who don’t want to be forced to marriage.

The Marriage Market Takeover is part of SK-11 brand campaign #changedestiny, launched in 2015 to inspire and empower women to shape their own destiny. As a part of this campaign SK-II has been sharing stories of women who overcame challenges and barriers that were preventing them from achieving their dreams and goals.

Within China, it’s mostly the highly educated and urban women who buy SK-II kinds of brands and suffer pressure from society for being unmarried

SKII found about the ‘sheng nu’ stigma, where unmarried women who were 27 years and above were stigmatized by the state media and labeled ‘leftover woman’. The main idea of SK-II was to turn around this norm and give these women a voice in the society, and the confidence to choose their own path in life.

Therefore, SK-II used this idea to develop a new strategic business approach that targeted the Young Executives (YE), a group of young successful, open minded and independent women (Prajat, 2015).

SKII premiere the film ‘Marriage Market Takeover’, putting a spotlight on the real-life issue of Chinese women being pressured to get married before they turn 27.

International skincare brand SK-ll is running “Marriage Market Takeover”, a documentary film putting a spotlight on the real-life issue of Chinese women being pressured to get married before they turn 25. In it, a number of brave Chinese women have daringly chosen to speak their mind about one of the most controversial subjects in recent Chinese history, the ”Sheng Nu” label.

The term was made popular by the All-China Women’s Federation in 2007 and translates to ”leftover woman”. As has been reported by the BBC, The New York Times and China Daily, the term has been used to denounce women who, regardless of the reason, want to wait with marriage – women who simply want to marry for love. At the heart of the campaign is a takeover of the marriage market in Shanghai.

In the film, many interviewees describe that they are torn between trying to meet their parents’ expectations to build a family, while at the same time wanting to choose their own path in life.

As the film shows, marrying for love can be easier said than done. In many Chinese cities so-called marriage markets are a common sight. Here, parents go to post, compare and match personal ads, listing the height, weight, salary, values and personality of their sons and daughters. In some cases, women are unaware that their parents have listed them at a marriage market. The markets are a symbol of the different views on marriage between two generations which lead to the pressure put on women by their families.

The film shows the marriage market in Shanghai’s People’s Park being taken over. A huge and beautiful installation was made with SK-II’s own ”marriage ads” that were in fact not ads but messages from hundreds of independent women, stating that they want to be in control of their own destiny. By doing so, a platform was created from where the women could voice their thoughts. On this platform, the women are shown to be happy, independent and confident – the opposite of the desperate image of Sheng Nus often being portrayed. The women tell the world how they see themselves and ask for better understanding.

A lot of the women SK-II has interviewed have shared stories of how happy and fulfilled they are, but they have failed to convince their parents and friends to see them in the same way they see themselves.

Despite living under pressure, these women have advanced and been able to achieve so much in so little time. They are capable, smart, talented and independent, and they are more than their marriage status. Undeterred, they’ve now decided to participate in this film, challenging what it means to be a Sheng Nu in the process. For these women, being successful and independent is something to be proud of and they refuse to conform to age-old traditions.

In addition to taking a stand for their right to marry in their own time, the women are asking for support to help change the perception of the word. They want to reconstruct the mutual respect between generations, increase society’s understanding of women’s right to choose their paths in life freely and take control of their destinies.

2. Justify your position on whether or not the advertisement effectively appeals to the function.

Yes it did, we can see this from the Campaign’s Performance

The response and engagement from the audience was huge and the campaign quickly became the talk of the town. We recorded thousands of social media posts from women sharing their own stories about the pressure and how the campaign had affected them.

The reactions on Chinese social media were overall very positive, as mainly female netizens recognized their own experiences in the video. Some exemplary netizens’ reactions were: “Whether I’m married or not is nobody’s business,” or: “I won’t stop pursuing my dreams because of pressure from society,” and: “Marriage is about feeling, not about age.”

Engagement sparked also outside of China.Women around the world joined the conversation and shared stories on how they were experiencing similar pressure to marry, expressing their support for Chinese women.

Celebrities, experts and NGOs picked up the campaign. The campaign became a reference point in the debate around Sheng Nu. Ashton

We saw over 2,000 editorial pieces globally,10 with 1,500 PR stories from China. It travelled into popular culture and the story spread to 54 countries on all continents, showing the universal appeal of the message.

Ashton Kutcher shared the campaign on his Facebook page and Leta Hong Fincher, an expert in the Sheng Nu stigma, shared and celebrated the campaign on Twitter.

There was instant and huge attention after the campaign, from the media and the consumers. To begin with, the hero film had over 2.4 million views after only 24 hours, and also became the top trending stories on the top Chinese blogging sites such as Weibo. The news about SK-II’s campaign continued to spread everyday and in a few more days, the film recorded even more views and also social actions from around the world. In a period of only two weeks, over 15 million views were garnered around the world, 10.7 million coming from China alone. There were also over 3 million social actions, which covered all the main platforms in China (Troedsson, 2017). It stirred up so much buzz that even the state-owned television CCTV couldn’t ignore reporting on the campaign. In China, this can be seen as a milestone of women’s right movement: the same government who had created and popularized ‘sheng nu’ now featured this stigma-removing campaign on its own television channel.

On the other hand, SK-II had a slow growth rate for many years in China, but after the campaign, sales increased dramatically to unprecedented levels. This made the year 2016 the most productive year in SK-II’s history in China business. The market share of SK-II has since increased, challenging competitors such as Lancôme and Estée Lauder, regaining its top position in the beauty and skincare market. Brand perception and the consumer base also increased, as more and more customers, especially the young generation, were attracted to the SK-II products. The connection between SK-II and the consumers was also strengthened.

Social media conversations gave positive sentiments about the brand, increasing the emotional link between the brand and Chinese women (Troedsson, 2017). There were over 200,000 positive comments about the brand, where the Chinese women openly expressed the influence of the campaign on their perception on the brand

3. Explain how you might change the advertisement to more effectively meet the function you identified.

Although women’s rights activist Zheng Churan generally welcomed the ad despite its commercial motives, she did criticize how it focused on the stereotype of the “leftover woman”, ignoring “the struggles of poor, less-educated women”. As she said: “We only see white-collar, elite women in this ad, but an 18-year-old factory girl pressed into marriage still has no voice” (Japan Times).

The exclusion of the ’18-year-old factory girl’ is understandable from a commercial perspective: she is not SK-II’s target audience.

SK-II products simply are an unattainable luxury for many women in China, except for those women who generally have a solid educational background, a blossoming career, and the access to high-end stores that sell SK-II – which are often the same women facing the ‘leftover’ pressure.

–> SKII can invite more women from different background to participate in the film.

4. Explain how you might change the advertisement to appeal to a different function than the one you identified.

Knowledge Function of Attitudes:

Companies can benefit from understanding the concept of the knowledge function of attitudes. For example, rather than targeting consumers who already have established knowledge on skin care, SKII can target individuals who are looking to establish their own skin care process and are not as knowledgeable about how to choose the product.

Some ways of advertising:

• Emphasize their Secret Ingredients PITERA™

  Pitera™ is a clear liquid rich in vitamins, amino acids, minerals and organic acids discovered by SK-II scientists.

  Pitera is the highly touted “miracle ingredient” that was discovered incidentally in the 1970’s, when scientists noticed the soft tender hands of sake brewers that sharply contrasted with their wrinkled and aged faces. According to the SK-II website, scientists spent years looking through 350 yeast strains to isolate the Saccharomycopsis yeast strain that produces Pitera. When they discovered it, leading scientist on the SK-II team Takashi Yoshiji said, “We knew we had found something very special – a gift of nature that will transform skin for generations to come. Even today, we are constantly making new discoveries about its efficacy after 30 years.”

• Show the skin improvement of the women who use SKII for 30 days.
• Compare the result of using SKII product and another skin care brand.

Here are some of the many many Pitera products that SK-II features:

Basically, Pitera, a natural by-product of yeast fermentation, is a rich liquid containing amino acids, minerals, vitamins, and organic acids, said to improve skin lucency, decrease wrinkles and lighten dark spots.